Sumac Literary Magazine publishes work by people connected to Carleton University and/or the land it is on. Students, alumni, faculty, staff, community members, and anyone with links to our campus or community are welcome to submit their work for consideration. If you walk your dog along the waterfront, drive past the Carleton sign each morning, once applied to Carleton, or ever attended a Ravens vs Gee-Gees event, your submissions are welcome.

Submissions are only accepted by email. Please send submissions to cusumacmag@gmail.com.

Note that this email will not be frequently monitored in the Fall term. You should expect to hear from the team during the Winter term.

In the body of the email, please write a cover letter that includes your name, contact information, and a brief biographical statement in the third person. The biographical statement should include a brief description of your connection to Carleton University, its campus, or the land it is on. Cover letters should also include the titles of the pieces you have enclosed, and a sense of your publication experience, if any. Please include a word count for fiction, non-fiction, and creative non-fiction pieces.

Send your work as an attachment to your email submission; work should not be copy-pasted into the body of your email. Please submit your work in DOC or DOCX format. If your work contains special formatting or visual elements, please send your work as a PDF. If you are submitting multiple pieces (i.e. 3 poems) please send each piece in a separate document. Please use a standard font such as Times New Roman.

We request that if your pieces include sensitive subject matter, please include a content warning at the top of the corresponding document.

You may submit in various genres, but please send all works in a single email or email chain. Please specify the genre of the piece(s) you are submitting in the subject line of your email.

Suitable work should be original and unpublished either in print or online. Simultaneous submissions are welcome, but please update us as soon as possible with any changes to the status of your submission.

Accepted work will be published either/or both in print and online, so you will be asked to give us first North American serial print rights and limited, non-exclusive digital rights. Authors retain full copyright for works published.

Submissions must not exceed 3 poems or 360 lines. Do not double-space unless the formatting of the poem intentionally uses blank spaces between every line.

Submissions must not exceed 3,000 words for a single piece OR one to three shorter pieces of up to 750 words each. Double-space and indent the first line of new paragraphs. Please specify at the top of the first page the number of words in the piece.

Submissions of an excerpt from a play must not exceed 3,000 words and may be single spaced.

Submissions of translated creative work (i.e. short stories or poetry) must follow the guidelines of the genre of the work. A permission letter from the copyright holder (usually the author or the original-language publisher) will be required to publish a work in translation.

In lieu of submissions of visual art, please query by email with a link to your online portfolio or a website where your artwork may be viewed.

Sumac Literary Magazine has a strict AI policy where no usage of any degree will be tolerated. If there is any indication of a piece having been created using AI, it will be rejected immediately.